Efficient

Procurement
Through
eCatalogs
Key Factors To
Online Catalog
Success
An Introduction

eCatalog systems have been designed to support the indirect purchasing process by making
information required for purchasing the products easily accessible. eCatalogs help buyers
to search for products and suppliers, place orders and track them online through the
eProcurement system. eCatalogs also help the suppliers to easily customize contents and
views of their products and keep the list of offerings updated.

In other words, eCatalogs help to streamline the requisition process and reduce the cost of
purchasing. It empowers every employee within the organization to raise purchase orders
from their workplaces to preferred suppliers by complying with the policies that are to the
best interest of the organization. This result in reduction of maverick spend, better
leveraging of discounts and gain more visibility in to spend.

Common challenges faced by organizations in absence of eCatalogs:

n Uploading and maintaining large no. of catalog items from different suppliers

n Delays in procurement cycle transactions

n Automating the entire Order to Cash transactions on the buyer and supplier side

n Manual paper based transactions are error prone and wastes time

n Risk of procurement non-compliance

n Need to manually input data to the ERP

n Limited control and visibility of procure-to-pay process

Why Is It Crucial For Organizations To Adopt eCatalog?

According to The Hackett Group, maverick purchases alone can account for up to 2% of
overall indirect spend. Although this figure might seem unworthy of your time, up to 50%
of your organization’s cumulative purchases are attributed to indirect spend. So if your
organization is spending, say, $2 billion indirectly, $20 million of this spend is maverick
purchases. On the other hand, a report from EY suggests that optimization of indirect
spend can yield savings of up to 25%. Coupling automated purchasing systems with
eCatalogs can support standardization and aggregation of indirect spends. By limiting
requisitioners to the catalogs of goods and services already under contract from preferred
suppliers, volume commitments can be realized and maverick spending can be reduced. Few
facts and figures from a recent report from The Hackett Group highlight the importance of
eCatalog:

n Top performers have shorter cycle times for processing orders and use catalogs to a
greater extent, bypassing longer requisition processes. For instance, it takes top
performers five hours to complete a purchase order, versus 15 hours for the peer
group. Catalog purchases also indirectly influence invoice processing cycle time.
According to the report, the invoice cycle time is six days for top performers versus 11
days for peers.

n Top performers order 43% of indirect line items through eCatalog versus only 20% of
peers

Which Categories Can Be Brought To Online Catalogs?

It has been observed that the top performers of the world enabled eCatalogs for a major
portion of their suppliers which contributes to a major chunk of their spend. eCatalogs form
the first step to supplier enablement. Hence, the top performers ensure that the majority of
their buying happens through eCatalogs and reap the benefits from it.

Organizations can realize the pre-negotiated savings from subsequent sourcing processes if
they can have the previously contracted items as a catalog item. eCatalogs from preferred
suppliers with whom the company sources items frequently will save both time and money
by reducing the requisition cycle time.

Best Practices for ECatalog Success

1. Create The Platform to Enable eCatalogs

Following are the two ways in which a supplier can open its storefront to the
customer organization
I. Punchout Catalog:
Punchout catalogs allow buyers to access a supplier's eCommerce website, be
automatically logged in, search the catalog, configure items, add them to the
shopping cart, and return the cart as a pending purchase order back to the
procurement system. In short, a Punchout catalog website is a standard
eCommerce website with the ability to communicate directly with a
procurement system and return a pending purchase order back to the buyer so
they don't need to enter product information in the procurement system. This
saves purchasing personnel valuable time since they don't need to enter the
product information. Punchout catalogs also save time by eliminating all the
maintenance and data entry of catalog upkeep. Punchout catalogs are
maintained by the supplier and do not require constant upkeep from
Procurement.

Punchout Catalog setup can be either of the following formats:

n cXML
n Open Catalog Interface (OCI )

II. Hosted Catalog:

The eProcurement solution provider like Zycus, hosts these catalogs shared by
suppliers through the provider's Procurement Network.

Hosted catalogs require manual loading into the procurement system and
therefore it's a tedious task to keep product inventory and pricing data up to
date. As a result, hosted catalogs are specifically suited to managing lists
containing a fewer products, which are purchased frequently and mostly have
stable prices.

On the other hand, Punchout catalogs are dynamic and always show an up-to-
date range with both replacement and new products. Punchout catalogs can
provide real-time pricing and availability, multiple configuration capabilities and
showcase related documents and decision-support information. Therefore,
these catalogs are better choice if you procure products that are complex,
highly configurable and service-oriented or have considerably large catalogs
with many line items or goods that require constant price and feature updates.
2. Maintain Current Pricing

Catalogs need to be updated on regular basis so that the buyers can make
requisitions based on correct data and pricing. As discussed above, Punchout
catalogs have the added advantage of displaying any updates in pricing and
items immediately. This minimizes the amount of time and resources required in
updating the data and ensure that pricing is always current.

For internally hosted catalogs, both contracted and non-contracted items need
to have a relevant price expiration date, beyond which the supplier need to
upload the eCatalog with new contracted price. Most eProcurement systems
now support simple CSV files, and allow suppliers to upload the updated
eCatalog data securely.

3. Track and Expand Compliance

By using an eProcurement solution to enforce buying from approved supplier

catalogs at pre-negotiated prices, greater spend compliance can be achieved.
According to a recent Hackett report, the indirect procurement benefited the
most through the use of eCatalogs in procurement, with an average of 20%
increase in compliance.

An eProcurement catalog implementation helps to monitor and reduce

unauthorized spend, improve compliance and financial reporting through
consistent sourcing processes. An efficient eCatalog solution should provide:

Punchout Catalog setup can be either of the following formats:

n Automated Compliance Checks to ensure POs leverage negotiated pricing and volume
discounts.
n Quick Purchase options from preferred suppliers or products within pre-defined spend limits.
n Administrative Controls to configure and limit item availability and item details to specific
types of users.

4. Maintain Up-to-date eCatalog Content:

In order to provide seamless purchase using the eCatalog system, the important
fields of eCatalog that needs regular maintenance are:
 Granular Commodity Codes:
Using commodity codes which acts as a primary key in identifying specific items
in the eCatalog and is a crucial element in the success of online catalog
management. EProcurement systems now have browsable category trees that
rely on unique commodity codes to assign the item to most appropriate
category. The unique codes for every item on the online catalog is also
important while setting up requisition approval rules that are reliant on the
codes to determine who should approve the purchase request for a specific
category/item. The codes also help the eProcurement system to provide better
spend visibility.

Description:
Each catalog item need to have proper description including name and list of
product-specific attributes. Creating this description requires lot of manual
effort initially but it not only helps the buyer to make the right choice but a
proper description containing rationalized words, aids in accurate keyword
searches during requisitions.

Images for Every Product:

Using professional and high resolution images that are hosted on a publicly
available web server, a higher level of confidence can be provided to the buyer
on making the right product selection and in reducing the chances of ordering
incorrect items.

Conclusion
eCatalogs have proven to be an important tool for improvement of Procure-to-Pay
efficiency. Organizations adopting it along with their procure-to-pay system can achieve
improved purchase order accuracy, improved supplier enablement and collaboration,
encourage compliance with procurement processes, enhanced cash flow and reduced cost
for data processing operations.
About us
Zycus is a leading global provider
of complete Source-to-Pay suite of
procurement performance AutoClass
solutions. Our comprehensive
iSave iAnalyze
product portfolio includes
applications for both the strategic
and the operational aspects of iCost
procurement - eProcurement,
eInvoicing, Spend Analysis, Financial Savings Spend
Management Analysis
eSourcing, Contract Management,
Supplier Management and eInvoicing iManage
qu
Financial Savings Management. iRe est
Our spirit of innovation and our One
View iSource
passion to help procurement
Procure-to-Pay eSourcing
create greater business impact are
reflected among the hundreds of eProcurement
Sup
procurement solution plier Network
deployments that we have
undertaken over the years. We are Supplier Contract
proud to have as our clients, some Management Management
iContract
of the best-of-breed companies iSupplier
Authoring
across verticals like
Manufacturing, Automotives, iPerform iContract
Banking and Finance, Oil and Gas, Repository
Food Processing, Electronics,
Telecommunications, Chemicals,
Health and Pharma, Education and
more.

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